During the past decade, mobile devices have come from being few and far between to being an omnipresent part of life in modern times. A number of European countries now even have more mobile phones than they do citizens!
The most successful categories on mobile devices are information services, social applications, videos, and entertainment applications such as games. TV services slot into the middle of these categories, providing users with a service on mobile devices that is often popular and highly relevant.
However, TV guides (unlike EPG's on digital television) developed for mobile devices, have done little more than duplicate a TV listings magazine on the mobile phone, with very limited functionality and then, added value. Only recently has a new generation of mobile TV guides emerged with rich functionality and direct integration with content services.
What drives the market for a Mobile TV Guide?
Most businesses launch a mobile TV guide as a way of making additional revenue, funded by advertising on the site or by the sale of additional items around the TV guide, or more increasingly by the sale of a downloadable application. Some main market drivers are:
o Supporting mobile video – "catch up" TV which allows users to view shows that missed last night on their mobile device.
o Increased consumer demand – new generation mobile phones are massively popular mobile-optimized internet sites and applications. Users expect to be able to get the same information on their mobile phone as they get via the internet.
o Take up of personal video recorders -PVRs can change people's viewing habits, and can also be a driver for mobile services as people want to be able to remotely schedule records on their PVRs from their mobile devices.
The Challenges
There are, however, substantive challenges in delivering any TV guide service:
o Supporting multiple devices – the complexity of mobile devices has increased exponentially along with their popularity means creating a guide suitable for all phones has become somewhat of a challenge.
o Integration with Personal Video Recorders-as above, it is challenging to be able to integrate a mobile tv guide with all PVRs.
A Successful Mobile TV Guide
The main key to the success of a mobile TV guide is helping the user to find shows that they are interested in viewing, and then transfering them through to watch them directly, or allowing them to be able to program a recording on their PVR back home .
This means that a successful guide can be achieved by giving users the ability to:
o Find a specific show
o Find something to watch at a certain time
o Link through to watch a show on their phone or record it on their PVR at home
o Handle on demand content
An effective mobile TV guide provides for each of these, and because the users' phone is personal, it should also remember what users have done previously, so that when they return to the phone a second time it is easy to find elements that they have found on past occasions.
